At the end of the book, Deren describes the scene with Lloyd Carr, the former Michigan head coach that recruited Trent to Ann Arbor, breaking the news to Trent that current head coach Rich Rodriguez did him no favors.

“Rodriguez had bad-mouthed him to every NFL scout he could,” Deren writes. “Rodriguez claimed that Morgan was lazy, he had an attitude problem and he was a big reason the Wolverines finished with a 3-9 record…”

Trent admits the words were “jarring,” and they were hard to understand given that he was so serious about his career that he actually moved in with his brother and sister-in-law and their two small children while going to Michigan. [ed: "Morgan Trent was so serious about football he decided to save on rent."]

But Trent was also worried about what Carr thought about his words showing up in the book. He talks to him, not Rodriguez. “I really like Coach Carr. He’s been very good to me,” Morgan says. “I think at first he was wondering, but I let him know it didn’t put him in a bad light. I would never do something like that to Lloyd. He’s great.” …

“I guess it was motivation,” Morgan says of the words that Deren estimates may have cost him $1 million. “(I) want to show people it was all false.”

Consider it done.

Here we go again, after one hell of a game of telephone from Rodriguez to NFL scout—at this point the story can get passed to and fro ad nauseum—to Carr to Trent to book author Deren. Rodriguez issued a denial…

“The comments attributed to me are inaccurate and absolutely ridiculous,” Rodriguez said in a statement. “I said just the opposite about Morgan Trent to NFL scouts and wish him well with the Bengals.”

…but even so, don't you kind of believe it anyway? Don't you sort of want to believe it? I believe Rodriguez told NFL scouts some version of what Deren says. I also believe that Trent was a lazy player with an attitude problem who was one of the main reasons Rodriguez's first team was a jumbled sack of cats attempting to claw in 20 different directions. Even if he didn't say it, I believe the words attributed to Rodriguez are accurate.

"I'm not surprised because I know what happened, and I know what kind of rules were broken. I couldn't see how they were going to get out of that."

"Whatever steps need to be taken (to restore Michigan's winning tradition), I'm all for it. What is happening right now obviously is not working. I don't know how long they're going to let this last until changes are made."

"Coach Rod’s a good coach, and people are just trying to get him in trouble to me," Graham said.

So Morgan Trent is not disposed to give Rodriguez the benefit of the doubt when Lloyd Carr convenes a special meeting of the Anti-Rodriguez illuminati with the express purpose of revealing the dastardly secret carried about by Rich Rodriguez…

who controls the practice logs? who puts Michigan Stadium in a bog? weeeeee dooooooo… we do!

He was not particularly good at football. He badly regressed after a promising junior season. Then when he went to the Shrine Bowl he "struggled," reinforcing the opinion of scouts "already down on him." The reason for this is now obvious: he hated the transition to Rodriguez, probably hated the coach himself, and spent a year half-assing it. The responsibility for this lies with Morgan Trent, even if he was so serious about football he lived with relatives(!). Attempts to deflect it only reinforce the very criticism (possibly) leveled by Rodriguez. It had nothing to do with the quality of the team, as Trent claims elsewhere in the article. A guy from Hillsdale went in the third round this year. The Bengals hadn't even talked to Rodriguez and still waited and waited and waited to take him.

During the very moments when Trent was doing whatever it was that made him a team cancer, Brandon Graham was turning himself into a first-round pick. We have not had any reports on what Rodriguez told NFL scouts about Brandon Graham, but dollars to donuts they were along the lines of "draft this man first overall and ask if he will adopt your kids." The reason Rich Rodriguez would say this is because of the things Brandon Graham did. You see, Rudy?

Now, there are a disturbing number of people who look at the Rich Rodriguez inkblot and see big pointy teeth. One major reason for this is that Rodriguez appears to be much harder on his players than Lloyd Carr. It's the very tippy top of the peak of hypocrisy for any Bo-venerating Michigan fan to look down on Rodriguez for this (his failure to resemble Bo in the win column is another matter). Part of that veneration is accepting the idea that being a coach often involves being very harsh to people who aren't living up to your expectations.

I wish that Rodriguez had managed to enter more smoothly but don't really blame him for the massive culture clash no one from fans to players to athletic director anticipated. He has a track record.

To be perfectly blunt and enraging to the denizens of the comments who get enraged when people pop on here and say dumb MLive-type things about departed players, I do blame Trent. Michigan is not going to be in good shape if Rich Rodriguez leaves after this year, and Trent would clearly like to see that happen and is operating either without a care as to how his inability to suck it up affects the program or with the express intent of getting rid of Rodriguez. Loyalty to the institution does not occur to him. It appears that correcting the record is so important to him that he's willing to sell out his alma mater to refute allegations that may not have actually happened and no one knew about. In doing so he's convinced me that the potentially fictional and definitely obscure allegations are true.

As for Carr, he gave explicit permission to Trent to sell Rodriguez out in this book:

But Trent was also worried about what Carr thought about his words showing up in the book. He talks to him, not Rodriguez. “I really like Coach Carr. He’s been very good to me,” Morgan says. “I think at first he was wondering, but I let him know it didn’t put him in a bad light. I would never do something like that to Lloyd. He’s great.”

No, just Rodriguez. Any question as so whether or not there is a major rift between the two coaches is now gone. If there wasn't, Carr would have talked to Rodriguez about it. He would have gotten some clarification or a denial or something, and he wouldn't have presented it to Trent in the fashion he did. If he didn't do that, he would have told Trent to shut up when given the opportunity.

If there is really a New Era of Accountability in the athletic department, Carr and David Brandon should have a come-to-Jesus meeting in which Brandon does a lot of screaming. Trent is a pissed-off kid who was working for a scholarship. Carr is supposedly a program icon and an athletic department employee. Michigan shouldn't be paying someone who is actively working against the interests of the athletic department. It's obvious that Carr could have helped smooth things over with any number of players but chose not to, chose to exacerbate things in certain situations. He could have been of help during the transition; he was the opposite.

Through it all, Rodriguez just grits his teeth and asks if you've heard his Lion King joke. I shudder at the tell-all book that will inevitably follow a Rodriguez canning.

*(meta: I had to link to a mgoboard message board post instead of the News because the News shoved their story behind a paywall a month after they posted it. No one is ever going to pay for that article. Go newspapers.)

It is blasphemy to support anything he does. We can make and accept any tenuous connection to any incoming recruit or perhaps uncover tiny errors in attributing practice time as voluntary v. involuntary in order to slam him every opportunity we get. We will ignore any evidence to the contrary that might server to bolster his image. We can accept anything negative that is written about him as gospel.

How dare anyone have the gall to say something in support of him without trolls popping up all over the place trying to refute any claim to the contrary that he is a classless hayseed who will never win at M.

We aren't against him or trying to bring him down, we are just leaping on anything and everything we can get ourt hands on to portray him in a negative light. We are loyal Michigan fans.

You choose your source:

1. Graham: non-biased, loyal, dedicated, hard-working player with great work ethic that was a first round pick

RR likely said something bad about Morgan Trent to scouts. He stood to gain absolutely nothing from doing so. This is equivalent to spreading rumors about people in bathrooms in high school just because you don't like them. Rodriguez might have gotten away with it if Lloyd Carr didnt do the same thing when he repeated the rumor to Trent instead of confronting Rodriguez like a man. Carr's actions do not worry me as much because he is not the coach at the University of Michigan anymore.

Both actions show a failure of leadership. That is what makes this so sad: in their desire to make themselves look better, both of these men ended up dragging another person through the mud (deserving or not). Hubris is an issue with human beings.

Out of your entire misguided post, the most spectacularly wrong assertion was this:

Rodriguez has implied on more than one occasion that Carr is significantly at fault for UM's failures in '08 and '09. Carr has taken the high road and never responded to his name being dragged through the mud.

That is not true. Rodriguez has implied there were gaps in Michigan's talent for 2008. He did not say his predecessor was to blame.

If you are confused by this, let me share a novel thought: a lot of players left (for the NFL, other schools) and no coach is personally to blame. The transition (i.e. fundamental change in attitude and scheme) left the cupboard bare. Not Lloyd. Saying the cupboard was bare does not mean "Lloyd left the cupboard bare." Stop personalizing it. Bad things can happen without having one person to blame. No one has dragged Lloyd's name through the mud. Please tell your friends. And please stop posting this tired, inaccurate complaint.

What I think is so troubling about anything that has ever happened these past 2+ years with regards to all the former players publicly criticizing the program, Lloyds overall silence and lack of effort to squash a lot of this, and what he may or may not have said to Morgan Trent is as what Sam stated so well this morning on his radio program. It goes against everything they were ever taught about the history and tradition of the program, and what it means to be a Michigan Wolverine football player or coach. They were taught that not one person is bigger than the program, and this program is all about, the team, the team, the team, and publicly working against the program is not what this program is all about. I have no arguement if any former player or coach has an issue with the past 2 seasons, or do not like the direction that the program is going under Rich, but it is also counter productive in every way possible to take those frustrations public. It hurts in regards to PR, and recruiting. I can only hope that Dave Brandon sends out a memo that criticism is accepteped, but from now on, lets handle this behind closed doors, and not publicly trash the program anymore.

a) I think you should be careful of the insults/allegations you toss around, especially regarding Carr, who still works for the institution that you chronicle. You are a giant voice for Michigan's fan base, I think, and insulting Carr is probably out of line, IMO.

b) You hit the nail on the head when you said that Trent had a "promising junior year" and then you dropped the ball. Rodriguez essentially admitted that his hiring of defensive coordinator/cornerbacks coach (Trent's position coach) Scott Shafer was a mistake by neutering him mid-season and then firing him after the year. We were all questioning the defensive strategies and alignments all year, yet it's somehow Trent's fault that all those hitches and out routes were completed. I begged and pleaded for people to understand during the 2008 season that the cornerbacks were being coached to play off and bail out into a Cover 3, but to no avail. Many of those short completions were NOT TRENT'S FAULT. I don't know how to say that any more clearly. We didn't get any pressure on the quarterback, and our linebackers sucked in pass coverage. It was a poor scheme, which was deadly when combined with the subpar execution by many team members.

To the extent that Trent's prowess at CB is relevant to this debate, it is in terms of how much his play on the field led to his being chosen in the 6th round, versus what seems be his explanation, that RR dogged him to scouts. Some of that poor performance may have been scheme, as you suggest, but it was his play nonetheless, or so the argument goes. Of course, none of us really knows why he was chosen when he was chosen.

I totally agree with what you have said in past threads that blasting Trent's public criticism of RR on the grounds of "herp derp, TOAST!!!!" was idiotic.

Magnus, your point about the scheme was much needed. Trent didn't cover himself in glory in '08, but he was never put in a position to succeed either. However, I think the more important question is this: what the hell was Rodriguez thinking making that kind of zero sum comment to a scout? I mean seriously, what does he stand to gain by trashing a former player? It is petty, childish and likely to breed the kind of enemies/resentment that seems to plague him in his tenure at Michigan. At the very least, it was a poorly calculated decision to talk about someone behind their back (a la the quintessential high school bathroom banter) and expect it to never get back to them. This wreaks of the kind of negativity one should want to keep out of a 3-9 program at all costs.

Even if RR was right in his assessment about Morgan Trent (an assessment I do not necessarily agree with), he stood to gain nothing by trashing Trent's draft stock, yet he did it anyway, out of pure spite. That is poor leadership on Rodriguez's part and much, much more worrisome than Brian is letting on.

what the hell was Rodriguez thinking making that kind of zero sum comment to a scout? I mean seriously, what does he stand to gain by trashing a former player? It is petty, childish and likely to breed the kind of enemies/resentment that seems to plague him in his tenure at Michigan.

he stood to gain nothing by trashing Trent's draft stock, yet he did it anyway, out of pure spite.

I think what you meant to say was

some unnamed scouts allegedly told Lloyd Carr that Rich Rod was trashing Trent, and then Lloyd supposedly told Trent, and then Trent apparently told a blogger who self-published a book.

Fixed.

Edit: all of your claims have been publicly and forcefully refuted by Rich Rod, if that matters. So basically your facts are 100% hearsay that have been flatly denied by the alleged perpetrator.

Your theory is that Lloyd Carr made this up off the top of his head, just to mess with Rodriguez? Plausible.

No one is absolving Carr of blame. He should be reprimanded for undermining Rodriguez, a behavior that is not only unprofessional, but clearly unacceptable in this context. Carr shouldn't have said anything to Trent as that only further exacerbates the PR situation his employer is facing. What he should have done is sat down with Rodriguez first and discussed it like a man.

That being said, it is patently naive to think Carr made an allegation of that nature without corroboration from at least one source who talked to Rodriguez. Also, I don't find it surprising that Rodriguez would deny doing something as distasteful as professionally smearing a former player whether he actually did it or not.

But, Lloyd did make allegations in that he said somone told him something (still an allegation, just not something he heard first hand). He clearly should not have repeated something damaging to the program/RR, but do you seriously dispute that Rodriguez, in all likelihood made those comments in substance if not form?

I'm guessing that this scout (and vicariously Carr) didn't pull this idea from thin air. However, if it comes out as BS, I will gladly eat my gigantic helping of crow. :)

Comment redacted, this whole thing is a fucking disaster. Its not worth it.

But also worried about what Carr thought about his words showing up in the book. He talks to him, not Rodriguez. “I really like Coach Carr. He’s been very good to me,” Morgan says. “I think at first he was wondering, but I let him know it didn’t put him in a bad light. I would never do something like that to Lloyd. He’s great.”

No, just Rodriguez. Any question as so whether or not there is a major rift between the

I agree. And ignore how petty and unnecessary it was for Rodriguez to professionally smear one of his former players, with absolutely nothing to gain from doing so besides making himself look better, at your own peril.

Please re-read the comment. I said that he professionally smeared Trent. If you were applying for a job and someone said that you were "lazy" and "unmotivated" which I believe were specifically quoted in Brian's post as things Rodriguez said about Trent, that would constitute a smear, or at least something offensive to you.

As as I said in a post further down, I think Lloyd Carr's behavior here was unprofessional as well. He should have kept this information to himself or had a meeting with RR to clear the air and discuss any grievances he had. He deserves to be reprimanded as such. That being said, it makes no sense for RR to make a comment against Trent. It is a zero sum action that, at best, leaves him where he started and, at worst, creates more enemies.

I also do not believe Lloyd Carr would just make this up, for any motivation. Carr is a great number of things, but I don't personally believe a liar is one of them. I think Brian at least implies as much in his post (i.e. that Rodriguez probably did say something along the lines of what Trent alleges to NFL scouts).

If it comes out that Carr lied or misrepresented those comments, I'll have to eat crow, and will personally apologize to all my negbangers :). I'm not trying to be difficult, I just think people are overlooking a gigantic lapse in judgment from Rodriguez.

RR says nothing about Trent. Talent evaluators get the drift, adjust their rankings accordingly, Trent likely falls to the same spot he is. Same thing gets accomplished, except RR doesn't look like he's selling out one of his players and potentially antagonizing those who don't want him to be UM's coach.

OR

RR says something negative about Trent to scouts. RR assumes that this information will never get back to Trent. Ironically, it does just that through Trent's old coach. Now old coach doesn't like RR because not only did RR take a player who was at least league average under old coach and turn him into a cover 3 bailing nightmare, but he professionally bashed the player for the difficulties the player had in picking up the new scheme. Both coach and player feel betrayed, enemies get made from people who are close to old coach (i.e. former players from 1996ish to present, boosters, etc.) and player (guys player played with, potential recruits from his HS, other former players, family, etc). After this, draft stock drops, arguably not that much more than if RR doesn't say anything.

In the first scenario, the result RR wants is accomplished while he still looks like the good guy and as if he is supporting the previous coach's players. This is likely important because the old coach was a players coach, ergo he probably takes major offense to people who mistreat his players.

This is hardly rocket science, just a rule RR should have learned in kindergarten: never say anything about anyone that you wouldn't want them to hear.

Giving an honest answer is perfectly fine. I don't expect all of your old professors and contacts to give positive reviews of you in letters of recommendation, but you just get to choose who can send those. Trent didn't

Yeah, I decided that the post was too insulting to Brian, and that I would have spent too much energy thinking about it afterward. I will say that I think Brian's post above is short-sighted, irresponsible, reactionary garbage. It evidences linear thinking, someone trying to see the issue with blinders on. I have lost a lot of respect for the guy. He is succeeding only in further polarizing the local (to this blog, and I now see also to WTKA) fanbase even more.

My whole opinion on this is still the same. Morgan Trent was just flat out not very good. He got owned every game basically what seemed to be his whole senior year. I sincerely hope Lloyd Carr didn't do what is being suggested by everyone. The guy has always had a lot of class so it's surprising to me he would potentially do this. While he was a class act the fact is he really started slipping as a coach especially in recruiting. People can say it's bad to say that Lloyd didn't leave Rodriquez much but that is the flat out truth. As much as I admire Lloyd Carr as a guy you just have to look at the facts, he didn't leave much talent at Michigan when Rich Rodriquez took the job.

I agree with many of the sentiments expressed about the statement that Carr gave "explicit permission." It's too speculative and there is not much of a logical jump. My own take is that if Trent is so cavalier about tossing around RR's name in a negative light because of his own issues with him, then he probably won't be too careful about how he references Carr, especially if he can use his name to discredit RR even at the risk of Carr's image.

However, I do think that this sentence is not very far off:

Any question as so whether or not there is a major rift between the two coaches is now gone.

A bunch of Lloyd's former players have already badmouthed RR to the press and caused HUGE amounts of damage in the process, Ron English is in another anti-RR camp (someone please tell me the basis for the story he put former players in touch with the Freep), Rick Leach railed against Lloyd for what he saw as giving UM a "huge middle finger," and now this? I know that Lloyd claims to have a hands-off stance with regard to RR, but this is ridiculous. You'd expect him to call off the dogs at some point. I love Lloyd, but he's practically Jay Leno to RR's Conan O'Brien. For such a class act, Lloyd is up to some shady stuff IMO.

Certainly anyone who thinks that some maybe-never-happened negative comments by Rodriguez to some unnamed scout or scouts cost Morgan Trent a million bucks has a brain that is located somewhere beyond the sea.

No one, and I mean no one, had Morgan Trent in the first or second round. And if he wasn't going to go in the first or second round, no comments could have cost him a million bucks. Most third rounders get sub-million signing bonuses and the minimum salary. Instead, Trent actually went HIGHER than the gurus ranked him. I mean sheesh, didn't everyone think Donovan Warren was generally better than Trent was (Trent was the one that got picked on a lot more, so the other teams' offensive coordinators certainly saw it), the same Donovan Warren that just went undrafted?

And I really think this is awfully flimsy stuff to go after Lloyd on -- Trent is fair game, he has a right to say ridiculous things and we have a right to think he's a complete jackass and call him on it. But are we really entirely sure that Lloyd even did anything here? I mean, Trent could be totally full of crap too.

Isn't it a bit premature to throw Carr under the bus (unless there's more to the story that you're not divulging...)? If the allegation that Rodriguez badmouthed Trent to NFL scouts is false, then surely the allegation that Trent heard about it from Carr himself can also be false. I don't see why you're dismissing the claims about Rodriguez but taking the claims about Carr at face value.

I'm all in for RichRod, but I'm not sure I totally buy this idea of a rift between Carr and Rodriguez. I'm sure they're not best friends, but it's simply not in Carr's personality to involve himself in the affairs of the program after his retirement. I think that's the reason he has kept his distance. I think their relationship is more like Carson-Leno than Letterman-Leno. Carr may have chosen someone different to succeed him, but he recognizes that the decision is not his to make and wants to avoid any perception that he's trying to stay involved with running the program.

You can't cite that picture as evidence against Morgan Trent, he did his assignment as instructed, that's on the support player (Where ever he was in that god awful set), who was probably out of position because that defense was ridiculous. That one's on Schaffer. Not that Morgan didn't get killed his far share of times that year.

He made 28 tackles in those 16 games and never intercepted a pass. He broke up a pass once every four games. He was not a starter. His team just signed Pacman Jones, of all people, to replace him in the lineup. Trent basically played just like a 6th round pick despite being one of the most physically gifted corners in last year's draft class. He proved no one wrong.

The Bengals were so pleased with his performance that they drafted another corner (Brandon Ghee) in the third round this year and signed one of the worst behaved players in the history of professional sports to come in and play corner for them as well. They don't appear to be overly enamored with Trent's play and his stats are unimpressive for someone who got such significant playing time (it is unclear how much any of these players you list got to actually see the field outside of special teams duty). Acting like he is significantly better than a 6th round pick (which is his contention, mind you, not yours or anyone else's here) ignores every opportunity he has had to prove himself on the football field throughout his college and pro career.

I continue to fail to understand why people keep using Trent's NFL career to make a proxy scouting for him going into the NFL. YOU CAN'T. Rodriguez did not have the ability to see into the future and what he might do. All he could do was use the present, and the present was a less than stellar cornerback who did not work hard or buy into the program. Can't fault Rodriguez for giving a less than stellar review of Trent, if he indeed did.

Plenty of people have posted here saying Carr should not be criticized for making statements when the only evidence of those statements is this poorly sourced article/book. That line of thinking would be correct if that is what Brian did. He didn't.

A former player has claimed in a very public forum that Coach Carr told him that RR essentially badmouthed him to NFL scouts. As others have pointed out, having the public perceive that the UM head coach is the kind of guy to do that is a PR disaster with respect to recruiting talented athletes (the lifeblood of any college football program).

Either Coach Carr said this to Trent or he didn't (regardless of whether RR did anything of the sort). If he said this to Trent on the basis of either third party accounts or his own invention (since I sincerely doubt he directly overheard Rodriguez badmouthing Trent to scouts) his actions directly undermine the future success of the Michigan football program. If he didn't say it, he has a responsibility as an employee of the University of Michigan athletic department to correct any public misperception about his comments that would serve to undermine the future success of the football program (How many recruits have expressed concern about RR's institutional support and job security as their sole doubt about committing to play at Michigan?). He has not done that. This isn't a matter of dignifying rumor with a response. A former player has essentially claimed out in the open (in parralel to what is going on between RR and Trent) that Lloyd Carr has been badmouthing RR to people who played under both coaches. If he did that, he needs to stand by his statements and (I think) should promptly be fired from the athletic department. If he didn't, he needs to clarify things publicly so that there is no confusion about his commitment to the ongoing success of the Michigan football program. Since he hasn't done that, he deserves to be criticized until such time as he puts an end to this issue.

You don't have to assume Carr made these statements in order to be critical of him in this situation. He is equally to blame if he didn't make the statements but fails to distance himself publicly from the harmful allegations/claims made by Trent and the author, especially in light of the fact that he is still an AD employee.

Assuming he did not directly hear Rodriguez doing this (which I can't imagine he did) and he failed to make any attempt to discuss the situation with Rodriguez before passing it along to Trent, he was doing nothing but spreading rumors that negatively impact the current coach and the program (especially now that they have become public). I don't think any employee of the athletic department should be engaged in that kind of behavior.

Wow . . . you're going to fire an ex-coach because he told one of his former players that the current coach badmouthed the player to his potential employers. That is beyond ridiculous.

If Coach Carr had allegedly said that Rodriguez should be fired or something like that, I'd agree. But you can't fault the guy for being honest with a player who he recruited and coached for four years. Besides that, it sounds like Morgan Trent told the journalist without Carr's blessing; Trent went to Carr afterward and told him that those comments would be in the book. So you'd be firing Carr because Morgan Trent has a big mouth.

If Carr heard Rodriguez do it, then telling Trent out of respect for their prior coach/player relationship doesn't really bother me. Being honest is one thing, passing along rumors from unnamed scouts/GM's without providing any background or context and without asking the person who is alleged to have done the badmouthing about it when those rumors cast the current coach (at the school that is paying his salary) in an extremely negative light is completely different. I also have a bigger problem with Carr doing it in the first place than with the fact that Trent has gone out and told the world about it (again, assuming it happened as Trent has described in the first place).

I think it is completely fair to hold all UM athletic department employees to the "don't spread rumors that could undermine the future success of the university's athletic programs" standard. I also think allegations that the head football coach "badmouthed" former players to scouts/GM's meets this standard because it is the kind of thing that is very harmful to recruiting/perception.